Sunday, February 18, 2007

We are planning a vacation in Italy this year. I have only been in Italy once before, in 1970, when we passed through Milan on the way to my summer abroad in Switzerland. Since I've never studied Italian, I'm looking forward to learning a bit before going, and have downloaded some Italian lessons for my ipod. Last night, we watched Two Women, an early film with Sophia Loren as a feisty and sexy mother who is unable to save her daughter and herself from the scourges of war. Having the subtitles speeds up the language immersion process and gives you a false sense of understanding what's being said. It does seems quite similar to French, Spanish and Portugese (well duh, they are all latin languages), so I'm hoping to be able to converse a little by the end of April.

We are going to spend a week in Sicily and spend the rest of the time (at either end of that week) in Rome. We'll have to save lovely Tuscany and the famous sites in Venice and Florence for another visit. I'm not sure why I'm drawn to Sicily, but part of it is that it's more like a Greek island than the mainland. It's sure to be warm and sunny.